LEAD - Learning Enhancement and Academic Development
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/14083
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Item Tacit Knowledge and a Mysterious Code: Articulating Academic Writing Expectations in Disciplinary Grading Criteria(2025-07-04) McGrath, Lisa; Donaghue, HelenAcademic writing is integral to student achievement in higher education. Despite a move towards enhanced transparency in assessment, little is known about how writing is represented in the grading criteria of the various university disciplines. This qualitative study analyses criteria to uncover how writing expectations are presented within them. First, we reveal what facets of writing are included in the criteria. Second, we identify three issues: a mismatch between the level of challenge and the grade awarded; inconsistencies within criteria in terms of what is being graded; and ambiguities in terms of the language used. We interpret these findings through the conceptual lenses of non-formal learning and tacit knowledge and argue that professional development activities for lecturers need to be designed to render tacit knowledge of academic writing explicit. Our paper is a catalyst for university departmental discussion as to what constitutes quality writing for a specific assignment, and how those expectations might be better conveyed through rubrics.Item Becoming doctoral researchers: the role of dialogic activities in fostering community belonging(Taylor & Francis Group, 2025-07-23) Adams, Gill; Donaghue, Helen; Turrell, MollyThe university research environment is seen as key to supporting the development of autonomous, creative and collaborative researchers, with supervisors often positioned as significant brokers, yet successful integration into research communities is challenging, particularly for early career researchers. In this paper we look beyond supervision to map the practices that support doctoral researchers to develop a sense of belonging to and participation in research communities. To elicit insights into the complexities of doctoral experiences, we deploy a somewhat novel approach comprising analysis of talk in tutorials, supplementing this with individual interviews. The findings reveal the centrality of relationships in doctoral students’ sense of belonging. Although supervisors are important in this work, this study demonstrates the complexity of doctoral experiences and the value of interactions and relationships with other human and more-than-human (e.g. texts, objects, physical and digital spaces, technologies) actors. These relationships were fostered through structured dialogic spaces and activities and various informal encounters. This study shows how these planned activities are experienced and how they interact with serendipitous events. We argue for increasing opportunities for dialogue and the use of tasks that encourage critical engagement within supportive small-group environments, to facilitate candidates’ integration into research communities.Item An embedded genre-based writing pedagogy for early-stage doctoral students(Emerald, 2025-03-10) Donaghue, Helen; Adams, GillPurpose Writing is crucial to doctoral students. Increasing recognition of the importance and difficulty of doctoral writing has prompted a call for doctoral students to be better supported in developing writing skills and confidence, and for writing to be taught within disciplines. This paper adds to this call by presenting and evaluating an embedded genre-based writing pedagogy for doctoral students. It focuses on early-stage doctoral researchers. Despite literature highlighting the importance of integrating doctoral students into scholarly practices from early stages of studies, there is a lack of writing research with these early-stage students. Design/methodology/approach This paper audio-recorded small group tutorials in the early stages of a professional doctorate and supplemented this data set with individual interviews with doctoral students. Data were analysed thematically. Findings In this paper, the authors report on four main findings: how genre pedagogy (1) prompted students to revise their understandings of doctoral writing, (2) inspired students to express voice and stance, (3) helped students develop a conscious awareness of writing and (4) influenced (positively) students’ identity formation and emotions. Originality/value While interest in doctoral writing has increased, there is little research about doctoral writing pedagogies for early-stage doctoral researchers. This paper also extends the literature on doctoral writing pedagogies by showing how a genre-based pedagogy helps early-stage doctoral researchers understand doctoral writing and develop their own writing via analysis of genres within their disciplinary community.Item Using genre analysis to design formative assessment in higher education(Taylor and Francis Group, 2024-12-09) Donaghue, Helen; Heron, MarionFormative assessment (FA) is universally recognised as key to supporting student learning and success in higher education (HE). Despite this, summative assessment dominates HE students’ studies. We join an increasing call for more focus on formative assessment and propose an original professional development (PD) approach to help HE teachers design formative assessment tasks, using the concept of genre knowledge. Data from pre-workshop questionnaires, in-workshop activities and post workshop interviews demonstrate genre knowledge to be an effective heuristic to identify task requirements. This genre knowledge helps teachers design FA tasks which scaffold final summative assessments through focused development of specific areas of genre knowledge. We make recommendations on how teachers and trainers can use genre knowledge to raise awareness of and provide support for designing FA tasks which enhance student learning and success.Item Talking About Teaching: The Value of Conversations(Bloomsbury, 2025-02-20) Donaghue, HelenItem ‘Now you’ve said it, it’s like a big light bulb!’: enacting post observation feedback suggestions(Taylor and Francis Group, 2024-08-14) Donaghue, Helen; Heron, MarionTeaching observations have become a ubiquitous feature of teacher education programmes, development schemes and assessment regimes. Whilst the processes and procedures of classroom observation are well documented, the feedback which follows teaching observations has been given less attention. Most research into teaching observations focuses on eliciting teachers’ perspectives on their experiences of being observed. In contrast, we examine two aspects vital to teacher development and enhanced teaching practice: (1) post observation feedback talk; (2) teachers’ enactment of feedback following the feedback session. This article argues that examining feedback talk and how talk may influence enactment can help both observers and teachers maximise the effectiveness of teaching observations. We focus on suggestions, a common way of helping teachers to develop and improve. We analyse empirical examples of authentic post observation feedback talk to explore how suggestions are made and responded to, identifying features of suggestions which prompt teacher understanding and enactment. Analysis enables us to provide observers with concrete advice on how to make suggestions, thus showing the practical affordances and methodological warrant of analysing feedback talk.Item Age and Nationality: Identity Tensions in Kuwait(2024-03-26) Almnaies, Shahd; Donaghue, Helen; Tajeddin, Zia; Yazan, BedrettinThis chapter examines identity tensions experienced by in-service female Kuwaiti English language teachers. Using a multimodal narrative approach, this chapter analyzes stories in the forms of written narratives and multimodal texts and images produced by Kuwaiti teachers to find out which identities and identity tensions are relevant to them in their working lives. In reading and responding to each other’s stories and sharing similar experiences, the participants came to an understanding that their identity struggles were due to the underlying tensions between younger and older teachers and Kuwaiti and non-Kuwaiti teachers. A significant contextual influencer was a political agenda (Kuwaitization) dividing local and non-local teachers. This chapter provides a language teacher identity perspective from Kuwait and the Middle East which is rarely heard. This study contributes a further understanding of two identity tensions: age (specifically, being young in the profession) and nationality. © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Zia Tajeddin and Bedrettin Yazan; individual chapters, the contributors.Item Embedding students’ academic writing development in early-career disciplinary lecturers’ practice(2023) McGrath, Lisa; Donaghue, Helen; Negretti, RafaellaThis study proposes a theoretically grounded and resource-efficient triadic model with the aim of supporting early-career subject lecturers in learning how to understand discipline-specific academic writing and teach it to their students. The model constitutes a ‘bottom-up’ collaboration process among a subject lecturer, an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) lecturer, and an academic developer. Adopting a case study approach, qualitative data were collected at multiple points in the process and were analysed using both thematic and linguistic analysis. Results indicate that the collaboration's genre-based, dialogic and egalitarian nature enabled the subject lecturer to grow her understanding of students’ writing development. She acquired some metalanguage to conceptualise and articulate her expectations in terms of her students’ assignments and was able to co-create learning tasks. Our study contributes novel insights into debates around where and how students’ academic writing development should be delivered, and, importantly, early-career lecturers’ role in that delivery. Finally, we propose an extension of the EAP lecturers’ remit to encompass working with early-career subject lecturers in a developmental role.Item The role of situated talk in developing doctoral students’ researcher identities(Taylor and Francis Group, 2023-10-28) Donaghue, Helen; Adams, GillIt is widely recognised that an important aspect of doctoral study is the development of a researcher identity. However, little is known about how to support this. Although previous research has highlighted the importance of discursive engagement for researcher identity development, no studies examine talk or discuss how identities are constructed through interaction. This article examines how doctoral students’ researcher identities develop during tutorials on a professional doctorate in education. Analysis reveals how researcher identities are constructed and accomplished, turn by turn, during study-based talk. Researcher identities are co-constructed with and confirmed by peers, and verified by a tutor who validates students’ actions and describes experiencing similar, often difficult, processes herself. Knowledge and understanding facilitated by discussion prompts identity development and tutorial talk builds a sense of belonging and confidence, acculturating students into the research community. The article makes an original contribution to research by analysing situated talk to show identity accomplishment in action. The article also makes recommendations for both practice and further research which include setting up opportunities for doctoral students to talk and share experiences, and close analysis of doctoral interactional events such as supervision meetings and peer support groups.Item Developing Researcher Identity Through the PhD Confirmation(University of Wollongong Australia, 2023-05-29) Heron, Marion; Yakovchuk, Nadya; Donaghue, HelenThe PhD confirmation, or upgrade stage, is a key requirement and rite of passage for most doctoral students. Yet despite its significance and high-stakes nature, little attention has been paid to students’ experiences of this stage of the PhD journey and how it influences the development of their researcher identity. Through semi-structured interviews with PhD students from a range of disciplines who had recently successfully completed the confirmation stage, we found that for many the confirmation stage was a catalyst for ‘feeling’ like a researcher through external validation, recognition and legitimacy. Students also developed their researcher identity through talking about their research with significant others. We argue for recognising the pivotal role the confirmation stage plays in developing doctoral students’ researcher identity and offer suggestions on how supervisors and researcher developers can support students through this transition.